This Involves Rick "No Ethics" Scott Again, So This Entry Is DEFINITELY Not Safe For Work

Yup, this will involved curse words.  Hide the llamas.

Over on Balloon Juice, they call it Peak Wingnut.  The belief - long since disproved - that at some point the mass delusional conspiratorial rumor-mongering of the Far Right would be so over-the-top that everyone and their grandparents would completely dismiss it and the Far Right would be discredited forever and barred from polite society.  You may notice we've yet to reach Peak Wingnut and probably never will (if Hillary wins in 2016, it will only change from racial nuttery to gender nuttery).

Considering what we've got as governor of the state of Florida, I prefer to call it Peak Asshole.  And we've yet to reach that as well.

Even after Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott went to the federal government to beg for Medicaid money - just not Obamacare Medicaid Expansion, because God forbid we get anything with Obama's cooties on it - and getting his sorry hide dismissed for refusing the obvious, we're still getting the stupid out of him as well as the lack of accountability.

Scott has just sent out a letter to the state agencies regarding the budget impasse within the Florida Legislature, and informed those agencies to start planning for the possibility of a full-bore state shutdown.  Per the Tampa Bay Times:

...Scott put agency heads on notice, giving them until 5 p.m. next Monday to identify services that must continue when the fiscal year ends at midnight June 30 and, in the absence of a budget, agencies could not spend money and state employees would not be paid.

In letters to agencies, Scott laid the blame for a potential shutdown on the Senate...

Okay, I gotta interrupt here.  THE SENATE WANTS TO PASS A BUDGET.  Blaming the shutdown on them when it's THE HOUSE THAT SPLIT TOWN THREE DAYS EARLY LIKE LAZY BASTARDS is the height of hypocrisy and blame-gaming.

Back to the report:

"It is possible that Florida Senate President Andy Gardiner and the Florida Senate will not agree to any budget without the specific expansion of Medicaid (at a cost to state taxpayers of $5 billion over 10 years)," Scott wrote. "Therefore, we are requesting your agency prepare a list of critical state services our citizens cannot lose in the event Florida is forced into a government shutdown on July 1st."

Scott is making it clear that any budget with federal Medicaid expansion money is unacceptable to him.  His allies in the state House will most likely deny any compromise attempt.

By sounding the alarm of a shutdown, Scott may be trying to rally Floridians to support the view he shares with the House that a debate on health care must take a back seat to a more urgent matter of passing a budget.

Bullshit.  Health care is part of the budget itself.  It HAS to be part of the budget.  Take away any provision of health care funding and we will see hospitals and nursing homes close their doors.

But Scott could also be seen as calling out his fellow Republicans for behaving irresponsibly. Talk of a shutdown could heighten a public sense of dysfunction in a state government controlled by Republicans at all levels.

Dear Rick "Asshole" Scott:  It takes two to have an argument.  Blaming the Senate for YOUR intractable irresponsibility is denial of the worst kind.

Scott's hardball tactics Thursday cost him support from one of his few staunch Senate supporters, Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater.

"I have great respect and admiration for the governor," Latvala said. "But I think it's unfortunate that they're taking this approach in trying to solve the situation between the House and Senate. Raising the specter of a government shutdown is not necessary at this point, and it's meant to put political pressure on the Senate… It's hard for him to be a broker for a solution when he takes one side like this."

I doubt Scott has any friends left in the Senate, the way he's been using them as a scapegoat for his political ambitions and short-sighted betrayals.

Part of me still thinks this whole thing is kabuki, that Scott is just playing the part of an Obamacare Refusnik down to the last minute so that he can play the martyr when a deal gets made including the much-needed Medicaid money.  On the other hand, the Republican Party has become so radicalized over constant campaigning to the far right that Scott may well fear any deal would hurt his 2018 Senate hopes.  There's still that factor from the federal shutdown I noted before, how the Far Right are convinced that the "doom-and-gloom" over a budget impasse / default is all a librul myth, and that if they stick to their guns they'll get the "small government" they've always hoped for.

I am extremely pissed off.  I would love to see Rick "Not My Fault, Screw Everyone Else" Scott get burned over this.  I would love to see the whole state FINALLY fucking wake up to the horrors of one-party Far-Right-Wingnut rule.  I would love to win one of the state lotto tickets before the whole thing gets shut down.  Unfortunately, I know my luck's not that good.  I know we're screwed as a state.  Barring outright arrest warrants issued for Scott by any of the various judges calling on his sorry ass to answer to the law, we're stuck with this crook for another three years.

Insert more curse words here if you like.

Predicting Character: The Hubris of Huckabee

Just to mention, the inevitable jumping-in of Mike Huckabee into the GOP primaries happened.  Inevitable in that he'd been making the rounds at the key states, making noises about starting up funding efforts, making wildly inaccurate accusations about the godless heathens dancing to Beyonce.

He's been mentioned on this blog several times before.  And on several occasions I've made the observation that among the social conservative wingnuts running for the highest office - the likes of Santorum, Cruz, Palin, others - Huckabee is the one that can be the most credible threat to win the nomination.

He made a serious run in 2008 that got him in third behind McCain and Romney, and Huckabee did a serious job weakening Romney's standing among the Far Right religious voters.

That he didn't run against Mitt in 2012 was a slight surprise: against the faux purity of plastic ideology that Romney offered, Huckabee was a genuine Bible-thumping wingnut that the GOP wingnut crowd could back.  The thing is, Huckabee may buy into religious dogma but he's not completely blinded by political ideology: he could see the political landscape in 2012 still favored Obama, and likely didn't want to ruin his reputation on a doomed effort.  Still, he was the one who polled well enough against Obama to have been a real chance for the Republicans to take the White House then.

Why I need to re-address my views on Huckabee now, since I've already got my appraisals from 2008 and 2012 to verify how he'll do for 2016, is that this time I'm also looking at previewing / predicting the Character traits that Huckabee likely brings with him.  Using Professor Barber's system of uncovering the candidate's world-view, I hope to establish just how much of an Active-Negative Huckabee could be sitting in the Oval Office.

Pulling back up the brief preview I wrote earlier this year from his appearance at the Iowa Suck-Up Extravaganza:

Mike Huckabee - Governor, Arkansas
Positives: Populist political figure from a strongly conservative political region (Southeast).  Can govern.  Knows how to campaign in a Congenial style.  Remained a well-known figure on the national stage - by being on Fox Not-News as a pundit - after his failed primary campaigning in 2008.  He polled well as a possible candidate in 2012 (and showed enough awareness to tell it wasn't going to be a good election cycle for Republicans and stayed out of it).  Has legitimate religious conservative cred (ordained Baptist minister).  Can not only pander to the Tea Party base, he can do so without looking like it.
Negatives: Not exactly trusted by the anti-tax crowds still dominant in the backrooms of the GOP leadership (which is ridiculous as GOP dogma is too firmly obsessed with tax-cutting for anyone to violate that rule).  Has been away from elected office long enough for people to forget any good stuff he'd done as governor.  His time as a fear-monger on Fox Not-News will turn away moderate voters.  His early campaigning comments - going after "family values" issues and insulting Beyonce (?!) - are not exactly endearing him to any younger voters.  And that's not even going into legitimate scandals - granting clemencies to violent offenders who promptly killed (again), a son who killed a stray dog under obscure circumstances - that can become millstones in a national campaign.  Worst of all, Huckabee's advocacy of his religious beliefs - his failure to even respect the No Religious Test requirement IN THE CONSTITUTION ITSELF - threatens the sanctity of Separation of Church and State.
Chances: While he won't get the deep-pocket backers the way Jeb Bush (or even Mitt if Romney decides to make one more try) will, Huckabee has a high chance to use his charm and campaign skills to make a serious go at the nomination.
Character Chart: I stated earlier how the Republican Party is dominated by Active-Negatives and has an Active-Negative platform, yet needs a Passive-Positive candidate to appeal to regular voters.  Huckabee can present himself as a Passive-Positive better than any other candidate... but he's so Active-Negative with his strict religious convictions that he'll likely lean that way.

There are different ways a President can be an Active-Negative, but the one trait that type shares is the "I Must" mindset of a hidebound ideology.  As in, "I must do this thing because it is the only way to do it and I am the only one who knows how."  This is the Uncompromising trait that Barber wrote about in his studies on Presidential Character.  Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, Wilson, Hoover, Andrew Jackson... each of them with different world-view backgrounds yet focused on the same unbending agendas.  Where LBJ's Uncompromising habit came from his need to succeed as the best, where Nixon's came from his need to prove himself in crisis, where Hoover's came from the unbending logic of an engineer, they all ended up in the same place: inflexibility regarding policy solutions that ended in disasters.

Of the previous Active-Negatives, Huckabee shares most with Woodrow Wilson, the Idealist among Presidents.  Wilson's idealism was a self-assured righteousness, not of faith but of politics.  It was that idealism that drove much of his progressive agenda but also led to pushing too hard for a peace platform in the wake of World War I that ended up isolating the United States in the worst possible way (not to mention various civil liberties violations like the Palmer Raids).

Huckabee's idealism is tied directly to his Christian faith.  Unlike most of the other Republican candidates, Huckabee is not a hardened fiscal conservative (although he'll sign any tax cut bill a GOP Congress will send to his desk) that the Establishment types would prefer.  He seems to genuinely come from the wing of the GOP that takes churching and proselytizing serious.  From the Washington Monthly article by Steven Waldman:

...I met Huckabee in the 2000s when I was running a multifaith religion website called Beliefnet. Huckabee was making the rounds promoting his efforts to encourage healthy eating. He was charming, reasonable, smart, and funny—conservative, to be sure, but empathetic and appealing. During his underfinanced campaign in 2008, he proved himself to be a far better candidate than John McCain. In a party that’s forever searching for the next Ronald Reagan, he’s the closest to the Gipper in temperament than anyone else out there...
...He could have energized religious conservatives while seeming hopeful to the rest of the population...

I know that Waldman's comparing Huckabee to Reagan should be a sign that Huckabee could well be a Passive-Positive - indeed, the one character type that could appeal to a broad range of voters at a time when all we have running are Active-Negatives - but then Waldman notes how Huckabee went and sold his soul:

Then he got a Fox News TV show. He evolved into an uninteresting, standard-issue religious-right pundit. He repeatedly said that Obama grew up in Kenya. He defended Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin. He champions David Barton, who argues that the Founding Fathers did not believe in separation of church and state. He even mocks Michelle Obama’s healthy-eating efforts, even though being the Biggest Loser (in terms of pounds, not votes) was his claim to fame once upon a time...

It's not so much that Huckabee went and re-branded himself as a Huckster.  It's that Huckabee saw an opportunity to make money and still stand on his reputation as a Moral-Majority Republican.  It's kind of a horrifying thought: that he not only got to sell snake-oil as a fear-mongerer, he somehow got to keep his self-image of a true believer whenever he looked himself in a mirror: the worst of both worlds.

Thing is, Huckabee didn't sell much of himself to Fox Not-News.  He had always been that fervent a "religious-right pundit".  Defending Barton - fake historian - over the issue of Separation of Church And State wasn't a new thing: Huckabee spoke against the precedents of Separation of Church and State years ago.  To the flashback machine of my blog:

...Please note sir, that your definition of what God is and what God wants, as a Baptist, is going to be different from even your fellow Christians, be they Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Calvinist, Reform, etc.

Please note Mr. Huckabee that your desire to rewrite the Constitution to reflect *your* point-of-view on God's Will, and it's only *your* will by the by, is going to scare the crap out of every other person who doesn't preach and pray to God the same way you do.  (add-on: and that includes fellow Christians)

Sir, you may be preaching thinking that you want to convert this nation from its seemingly godless ways, but rest assured we Americans are more driven by our faith and our acceptance of God moreso than any other Western nation. There is no need to make the Secular Law of the Land to mirror the Law of Faith. If you do, if you persist, you're going to find more people bickering and arguing over the Law of Faith the same as they bicker and argue over the Secular Law...

Huckabee hasn't changed since 2008.  The only thing's that changed is that Huckabee is more rigid in his denouncements of the "liberal" godlessness threatening Christians.  His claim that gay marriage will "criminalize Christianity" is just one big proof of how his fear-mongering has moved from being a smiley happy preacher to a dark doom-and-gloom judge of us all.

If we go into a more detailed biography - there are several in print, but one from the New Yorker in 2010 may help best - we can see the Uncompromising religious idealism of the man:

When Mike Huckabee was born, in 1955, the mores and values of Christianity seemed indistinguishable from the mores and values of the country. Growing up, Huckabee assumed that everyone was Christian, and in Hope, Arkansas—which is also Bill Clinton’s home town, though the two politicians did not become acquainted until adulthood—he was not far off. His family was not deeply religious, but his mother, Mae, took Huckabee and his sister to Sunday school every week, where the preacher would “literally scare the hell” out of him. “I grew up in a culture where everybody went to church but nobody took it that seriously,” Huckabee told me one afternoon a few months ago, drinking tea on the sunporch of his house in North Little Rock...

...When Huckabee was fifteen, he encountered an alternative. A young couple in his neighborhood offered Bible study at their home on Wednesday nights, and these meetings changed the way he saw his place in the universe. “For them, Christianity was not a cultural expression—it was a personal relationship with God,” he said. “It wasn’t about behavior.” He was attracted to the intimacy and depth of this vision, and to the couple’s emphasis on love rather than fear. "Evangelical essentially means people who have a belief in the authority and veracity of the Bible,” Huckabee said, “but who also believe that the Bible is about good news..."

...In some ways, Huckabee seems like a promising candidate for 2012: a squeaky-clean family man and bona-fide Christian who loves to talk. His communication is folksy but fluid; he never seems flummoxed, like George W. Bush, or befuddled, like John McCain, or unprepared, like Sarah Palin. “If we’re running a race against their most articulate guy,” Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s former campaign manager, told me, referring to President Obama, “we should put our most articulate guy. Huckabee’s that guy...”

This was in 2010.  Other than the change in messaging from hope and love to "war on faith" fear-mongering, there remains the constant of Huckabee's religious convictions.  It may not be a "fundamentalist" form of faith, but it's still an "evangelical" absolutism that few other Republicans can even fake.

It's that religious absolutism that made Huckabee free a lot of state prisoners who found out quick that professing conversion to faith as a quick ticket to paroles.  It's that same religious absolutism that will make him reject the growing public consensus that gay marriage is not a threat to heteros.  It's that religious absolutism that has convinced him that there should be Religious Tests and religious-based laws governing the nation, despite the Constitution and the proof of history that such laws were dangerous.  

Huckabee may have as a personality the Congeniality skills that makes him likable, and approachable among the lower-class citizenry that the other Republican candidates can't abide.  But he's an Idealist who won't bend on matters of personal faith that will dictate his public actions that will affect the rest of us.  That puts him in the Active-Negative category as much as the con artists making up the tax-cut pro-business Establishment candidates facing him in the primaries.

He's simply not a sane alternative to the likes of Cruz or Walker or Jeb or Rubio or any of the others.  In some ways he's worse: he's driven by a belief in God that isn't humble or accepting, it's demanding and inflexible.  It borders on hubris, a form of excessive pride that puts a man above others, making himself a god.  Huckabee may think of himself as God's messenger, but he's not: he's his own.  Hence the hubris, hence the pride.

And the Bible is pretty strict about what pride brings about.  Proverbs 16:18.

UK Elections 2015: What the Hell Happened?

Had to admit, I was hoping for a divided result to where another coalition would have been necessary, along the lines of Labour having enough seats to tempt potential allies in the Liberal Dems or the rising Scottish National (SNP) to turn over Tory Prime Minister Cameron's Austerity regime.  Most of the pre-polling pointed to a muddled result.

Instead, the results ended with the Conservatives winning enough seats to secure their own majority under Cameron.  Labour lost seats, the Liberal Dems were near annihilated, and the other third parties barely scratching out single seats making them more than meaningless.  The only other winner on Thursday were the Scottish National Party, which pretty much dominated all of Scotland as a voting bloc: a major paradoxical turn of events regarding Scottish independence movement (which had been shut down not too long ago).

So, what the hell happened?

Simplest explanation is usually the best one.  The simplest explanation is that the United Kingdom's economy is struggling but stable.  In spite of an austerity regime of spending cuts and uneven tax hikes/cuts, the UK's economy was stable compared to the rest of Europe's.  Parties in power tend to stay in power when conditions - economy, wars, social trends, lack of political scandals - are stable and manageable.  If the economy was truly tanking, or there were troops caught in quagmires in overseas occupations, or the Conservatives were caught in massive bribery/sex/bizarre Masonic ritual scandals, we would have seen voter unrest and a desire for change at the top.

Cameron was able to sell economic stability as the Conservatives' platform.

Stability - especially economic stability - is the big reason a lot of parties/elected officials can stay in office even during trying times or questionable leadership.  Here in the U.S., that kind of stability is why Obama won in 2012 despite the Republicans' efforts to claim otherwise, and Bush the Lesser winning in 2004 (as the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan hadn't soured yet and the economy was still - barely - ticking), and Clinton winning in 1996 during the Internet Boom, and Reagan winning in a (misleading) blowout in 1984...

Nearly every electoral turnover here in the U.S. happens because of a major, troubling economic malaise.  At the Presidential level, major recessions (and a Great Depression) ended a lot of one-term guys like Bush the Elder, Carter, and Hoover (going back into the 19th Century we can point to Van Buren).  Obama won in 2008, and the Democrats won Congress in 2006, due to the economic downturns starting to collapse during Bush II's second term as well as growing disillusion over Iraq/Afghanistan.  Republicans took over Congress in 1994 due to a slow recovery as well as the overall ennui of Democratic control for 25-plus years.  Republicans had brief control of the Senate in 1980, but lost that as the 1981-83 recession turned voters against Reagan's tax-cut agenda.

Most other congressional turnovers are tied to economic woes (other times it's shifting demographics affecting gerrymanders, which affected the 1994 and 2010 results).  The only exceptions to this would be honest-to-God scandals like Watergate (which hurt Republicans who had nothing to do with it) or bad wars like Iraq II.  Even major scandals like Iran-Contra and the S&L debacle, or petty ones like the Lewinsky Affair, might not impact results as long as people are content with their lot.

When Clinton campaigned in 1992, the inter-office message "It's The Economy, Stupid" was pretty much the right message.

(To explain the Republicans regaining Congress in 2010 and retaining it in 2014, I'd have to point to the perception of economic disaster painted by the GOP, especially over the "threat" of Obamacare and tax increases.  During periods of lesser voter turnout like the midterms, that perception can be enough)

How this applies to the UK would be the same thing: while unemployment remains an issue, and cuts to social aid are a serious problem, most Britons seem content overall (or at least unburdened) with the direction their kingdom's economy is rolling, and so they're not about to rock the boat.

A more thorough examination into the election would point to what was happening with Scotland.  This gets a little harder to explain.

Even though Scottish voters rejected full independence, those same voters remain upset at how their nation is mired in deeper economic woes than the rest of the UK.  As a result, voters switched from the Labour Party - which used to dominate that region - to the Scottish National as a form of protest.  Even though at the united level, the incoming SNP ministers won't have any real power (they're third behind Labour, which means they're not even the official Opposition party) to make changes.

On the one hand, this cut into Labour's overall strength of numbers as a major party.  On the other hand, this gave Conservatives a means of fear-mongering - this was arguably one of the nastier campaigns in modern history, which is saying something considering how vicious British tabloids get - to their base voters and undecideds: by warning of a threat by the SNP - certain to win enough Scottish seats to be a threat - to divide Great Britain if they were to form a coalition with Labour, the Tories ensured voter turnout to their side.  As another part of the paradox, that fear-mongering worked to SNP's advantage as Scottish voters bought into that and supported the SNP well above the staid Labour.

Another factor was the utter collapse of the Dems (no relation).  What had been a small-yet-thriving third party alternative between Far Right Conservatives and Far Left Labour fell apart in the wake of this election.  The explanation for that goes all the way back to the deal with the devil that party leader Clegg made with Cameron in 2010: rather than team with Labour to form a minority government, Clegg teamed with the Conservatives to form a coalition government.

That deal was supposed to moderate the Tory agenda and preserve key issues for the Lib Dems.  Instead it gave the Conservatives a license to pursue their own policies, forced the Dems to vote on matters they normally wouldn't have, and drove away supporters after failing to prove any influence on government policies at all.

At the time - 2010 - Labour was a weakened party riven by scandal and barely functioning: Blair's scandals (sucking up to Bush/Cheney had to hurt) and Gordon's poor leadership made them a party on the downturn.  Clegg probably viewed them as a sinking ship (literal and metaphor) and likely felt he could get a better deal out of Cameron. He didn't.  He got the worst of both worlds: the coalition neutered the Liberal Democrats on policy matters, and the party got all the blame for Conservative actions that violated the liberal leanings of both the Dems and Labour.

Lib Dems went from 57 seats to just eight.  Voter disillusionment is the only explanation.  How many switched to Conservative and how many went for Labour needs deeper examination (given how Labour lost seats not just in Scotland is a factor here as well).  But if any tangible change went for the Conservatives this election cycle, this was it: the vacuum caused by the Dems' self-implosion was not filled by other third parties, and those votes had to go somewhere...

Past all that, I got nothing else to say about this except "Good luck, Brits.  You get what you pay for."

The UK should now expect increased privatization efforts in education and health care - despite evidence that in both cases nothing good is happening.  More tax cuts to corporations and wealthy are likely, even against evidence that income inequality is a growing problem in the UK (as much as it is here in the US).  And now that one party is in charge, expect the radicalization of that one party to turn into obsessive dogma at the expense of pragmatic reform.

My apostasy against the American Conservative wingnuttery may blind me against the more constrained-seeming British Conservatism, but Right Wing is too far a wing for me no matter the country.

I dread the coming austerity collapse Great Britain is about to get.

Elections Matter: The Past, The Present, The Future

Elections are in the news here and there and everywhere.

To the past, a previous election from weeks ago is still making the news because it just only had gotten resolved about 50 minutes ago in real-time (I was about to write something else and blamm-o, deal got done).  I speak of the Israel election:

With just an hour to spare before a deadline, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced late Wednesday that he has succeeded in forming a coalition government.
According to Israel Radio, Netanyahu came to an agreement with the final party required for a coalition, the right-wing Jewish Home party, at 10:30 p.m. local time...
...Netanyahu had six weeks to form a government after the March 17 elections in which his Likud party won 30 seats. They beat his main rival, Zionist Union's Isaac Herzog, who won 24 seats. Netanyahu now has one week to present his coalition and Cabinet to the Knesset.
Netanyahu's government is likely to be a right-wing government with 61 seats out of a 120 seats in the Israeli parliament, the bare minimum to form a coalition.
One of his primary coalition partners, Avigdor Liberman of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, announced in recent days that he was leaving the coalition and resigning his post as foreign minister, which would cut Netanyahu's coalition from a strong 67 seats to a weak 61 seats...

Coalitions matter in Israel and other nations because the proportional voting system combined with their parliamentary form of government means multiple parties spread across a finite voting populace: creating several large parties with pluralities but not majorities, and giving the smaller parties chances to form coalitions and extort prizes and favors.

This means the strength of the prime minister in a coalition majority depends entirely on how many parties he can pull together to form enough votes to avoid a government collapse.  As of now, Netanyahu is about one vote away from a defection on any key legislation into a tie vote, and two defections away from a failed vote.  I'm not entirely sure if a single failed vote would be construed as a no-confidence that could collapse the entire coalition and force a new election, but I think I've seen that happen before... a lot... with Italy's government.

Netanyahu may well be on the hardest tight-rope walk ever of his long - and questionably corrupt - prime ministerial career.  He's formed a hard-right coalition, but each party is led by a factionalist some of whom aren't entirely fond of Netanyahu on a personal level.  He has to placate some factions more than before to keep them happy... but doing so risks the possibility of outraging the rest of the nation and alienating one of the more centrist coalition members into quitting the group.

That election may be in the past, but the results of it - close and as far from a solid majority as any government would want - will haunt Netanyahu's current coaltion for the next year, if it even lasts that long.

It helps an election if the results are clear-cut and obvious.  Like the one that just happened in the Canadian province of Alberta.

The news about it since last night has sent shockwaves across Canada and even into the U.S.  Not because of the results - polling ahead of time showed the New Democratic Party was going to win over the once-controlling Tories/Progressive Conservatives - but because of the crushing decisiveness of the results and how it signaled leadership change to a region that hadn't switched hands in over 40 years:

The NDP, a party that had never won more than 16 seats, captured more than 50 to secure a majority in the 87-seat legislature.
The Wildrose party took second place and will form the official Opposition, while Prentice and his battered PCs were relegated to third.
It was a crushing defeat for the Tories, who had steered the ship of state since 1971—longer than any party anywhere in the country...
...(Outgoing leader Jim Prentice) took over a party in September that had been stung by scandals under former premier Alison Redford. Legislature members and the premier were using government planes for party business and Redford ordered that a penthouse apartment be built for herself on top of a renovated government building.
The party had also failed to build promised schools and was criticized for lavish salaries and severance payouts to political staff and government executives...

While the real causes of the switch between the conservative PC party and the more liberal-labour NDC are many, it basically breaks down to one thing: the Progressive Conservatives had been in office too long (over 40 years!), took their hold on power for granted, did little to keep the populace happy, got corrupted, and got bent.  That corrupt attitude and failure to respond to the electorate shows in the shocking fortunes of the Wildrose party - a more hard-core conservative group - that won second place.  People were so fed up with the Conservatives that they fled to the more wingnut party out of spite.

Still, this is a huge seismic shift in electoral favor.  Alberta had long been one of the more conservative provinces (not state, they ain't like up Oop North) in all of Canada.  When the Red State/Blue State divide in the United States back in 2004 created homogeneous blocks of Conservative/Liberal zones, the mapmakers of the so-called Jesusland would add Alberta as part of that Red State empire (with the Blue States and the rest of Canada labels the United States of Canada).

You have to admit, having one party in control of anything - a state or province, the nation as a whole - for more than two decades is pushing the limits of effective and responsive leadership.  Parties that stay in power calcify, get lazy, get to thinking nothing can topple them, get to thinking they know what they're doing even if they keep repeating the same mistakes.  Fresh ideas become fewer, needed reforms less likely as they butt against the status quo.  Not to say that turnover for the sake of turnover is good - that way leads to losing too many people who do know what they're doing, and disrupts any long-term fixing of problems - but if the same clowns have been in power for more than four decades, I guarantee you things have gotten sloppy and stupid.

This is still a big deal.  This is akin to a state like South Carolina - long a home of conservative ideology regardless of which party (Democrats before 1964, Republicans after 1972) ran it - suddenly voting out every Confederate flag-waver and replacing them with pro-choice civil rights advocates who all attend Unitarian services (in short, beyond impossible).  The seating went for 16 for the New Democrats all the way up to 50 out of 87 seats: about 20 percent up to 60 percent, about as solid a majority as the Republicans here in Congress controlling the House.

Alberta's election has long-term implications.  The reigning national Conservatives long counted on Alberta as their base of support: if they've lost that many voters this year, it's not likely those voters will turn around and vote for them in the national elections this autumn.  And this election has ramifications for other future elections, not just for who controls Ottawa.

It's not entirely clear if what happened in Alberta will affect the major partner of the British Commonwealth, but the United Kingdom elections that are happening tomorrow (or today depending on your time zone, a big hello to any of the UK readers I get if any) may see some voters inspired by the conservative kick-out by their Canadian cousins.

The UK Parliament is up for vote for the House of Commons, and right now the whole thing is a literal dead heat with an unlikely majority.

The three major parties - conservative Tories, socialist Labour, liberal Democrats (no relation) - are in somewhat bad shape.  The Conservatives under Cameron have had a messy, destructive five years of coalition rule: their austerity measures of social spending cuts and tax hikes on middle-income people hurt their economy.  The Liberals under Clegg made the mistake of selling their collective souls to the conservatives to become part of a coalition, and got caught defending bad conservative policies that hurt their own standing and weakened them for this cycle.  Labour is being touted as the least evil of the three now - which is telling you something - but are led by a bland figure in Miliband whose lack of charisma hurt the national campaign, while the party itself still has not recovered its reputation after the disastrous end of the Blair/Gordon years.

The likelihood of another coalition government gets scarier when you factor in the other once-smaller "third" parties that are more wingnut than the major parties.  In particular, the rise of what's known as UKIP, which was polling at a popularity percentage of 13 percent.  Try to picture it this way, America: UKIP is anti-EU (which for British politics isn't too crazy actually), anti-regulation (libertarian/Randian), anti-Arab (neocon hater wannabes), anti-immigrant (uh-oh), racist (hoo-boy)... Lemme put it another way, America: picture the Klu Klux Klan with 13 percent of the voting base and you've got an idea what the UKIP represents.

Here's the thing: if the Conservatives win just enough over Labour but not enough for its own majority, and the UKIP is sitting there with just enough seats to form a coalition... yeah, be afraid America, our best international ally just went Teabagger on us.  The irony of it may be lost in the trans-Atlantic transition...

There's also the possibility that if Labour wins just a few seats over Conservatives but not enough to control, they'd have to see about forming a coalition with the Dems (no relation), if Clegg's party is able to hold enough seats of their own.  It's more likely Labour could form a coalition with the Scottish National Party, which is poised to clean up most of Scotland's seating in Parliament... but which Cameron claims is an "illegitimate" move, leading to an international crisis on a scale equal to Election 2000.

Part of me is wondering if the British voters paid attention to Alberta: having seen an ineffective conservative government get ousted by the voters had to have given them the same idea among the non-affiliated voters.  It's a question if it happened too soon or if it happened at exactly the right time for it to have an effect in Great Britain itself...

I mentioned before how Alberta's election can affect the national Canadian elections set for October.  The potential downturn in support for the national Conservatives does not yet translate into gains for the other major factions, but the New Democrats have to be energized by their win here to motivate turnout everywhere else - where more liberal/left-of-center voters reside.  It may yet shock the national Conservatives into moderating their message rather than react more radical (although that's unlikely: the hard-core members are too set in their ways by now).

And even though Alberta's election was only in Canada, it has an effect across the border here in the United States.  The New Dems campaigned on a strong pro-environment anti-oil platform.  The incoming leader, Rachel Notley, promised to end the aggressive push for the controversial Keystone pipeline (calling it now an American problem, not Canada's).  That she won a decisive majority in what had been a province overly reliant on the energy corporations means that the climate change argument is a winning one even in pro-oil markets.  I would think the Koch Brothers and other energy conglomerates pushing the Climate Denial are reconsidering their options.  ...Nah, the Teabagger faction here in the U.S. is too far gone...

But there are other lessons to learn here for American politics gearing up for the major 2016 Presidential elections (with key Senate races as well).  First off, the conservative message of the last forty years - deregulate, cut taxes, cut social spending, worship the rich - is not as potent as it was under the Age of Reagan.  Voters who lived for decades in a free-market, far right region like Alberta have gotten sick of it and finally tuned out.

We're about due to see the same thing here in the U.S.: the same amount of decades of massive tax cuts and diminishing social services are starting to adversely affect places like Kansas and other Red States.  Decades of unchanging political leadership like here in Florida are starting to show signs not only of corruption but also complacency and ineptitude, and worse tuning out on the needs of the local voters crying for leadership on health care and climate change.

There's an irony here because the conservative Republicans are charging headlong into the Presidential race on the belief that they are due for taking back the White House.  People are wondering why so many Far Right GOP'ers are putting their names up for consideration this primary season need to consider the myth of the Pendulum Swing: the idea (ignoring actual history) that the White House tends to swing back and forth from one party to another.  That after a two-term Presidency, the party in opposition is poised to take over the Presidency for their own two terms.

As I noted, that ignores actual history.  External factors - weak national parties leading to constant one-termers that dominated much of the mid-19th Century, Presidents dying in office leaving weak replacement Veeps in charge, ongoing national moods such as the post-Civil War "Bloody Shirt" dominance by Republicans (1861 to 1912, barring exceptions) and post-Depression dominance by Democrats between 1932 to 1968 (with Ike the exception) - have more to do with which party controls the Presidency.

What really matters is performance in the White House: if one party does well, the voting electorate will continue to back that party until things fall apart for it, much in the way 40-plus years control of Alberta fell apart for the Conservatives.  The reasons Bush the Lesser won after the Bill Clinton two-terms had more to do with Al Gore avoiding his campaign to link to the still-popular Clinton, as well as a broken voting system in Florida that threw the results into chaos.  The reason Obama won in 2008 after two terms of Bush the Lesser had a lot to do with the disasters of the Bush II administration - collapsed economy, bad wars, failed policies.  Nixon won in 1968 because LBJ's disastrous administration led to the end of the New Deal era that carried over through the FDR, Truman, and Kennedy administrations (and also through the Eisenhower Republican tenure, which is telling).

In all other cases, a popular Presidency leads to the successor candidates gaining their own terms.  Jefferson begat Madison who begat Monroe (who benefited from an era where the opposition party died away) who begat Adams... who flopped as President.  Jackson led to Van Buren... who flopped, and at this point the one-terms moved into play as the regional factions divided the nation (and the dominant Democratic party) up towards the Civil War.  The alienation of the Democrats post-war pretty much gave Republicans control of the White House from Grant to Hayes to Garfield to Arthur... and that was with Grant's administration being one of the most corrupt in political history and with Hayes honestly losing but eking out a corrupt deal due to the Republicans wielding enough political clout to pull it off.  Cleveland becomes the Democratic hiccup between Arthur (Harrison kinda shouldn't count) and McKinley, who begat Teddy on his own successful two-terms who begat Taft (broken up by Wilson due to the GOP schism between Teddy and Taft) leading to Harding and Coolidge and Hoover... at which point the Great Depression shatters Republican control for the next 40 years...

The lesson here is: successful and popular Presidency continues the control of the White House to that President's party.  It's one of the reasons why Republicans still scream about Obama being a failure when he's not, and it's one of the reasons they need to be afraid of the fact Obama is still more popular than they are.

Hell, Hillary is still more popular than the Republicans.  This is not at all like Alberta, or Israel, or the UK, where the leadership's popularity took collective hits and weakened their parties.  Israel is one bad vote away from collapse: who knows how the UK elections will go.

We need to see how the British elections hold up tomorrow... I mean today... I mean, ah damn you Greenwich Mean Time!

Cinco De Mayo: More Than One Remembrance

Today is Cinco De Mayo, kiddos!

But something else of note: today is a Tuesday, and if City of Heroes was still up and running this day would be a Tanker Tuesday.

Some background (taken from a fanpage I created ages ago on a now-defunct website):

Tankers are one of five original Archetypes for the City of Heroes MMO character designs. There's meant to be a role played by each AT, and a way of balancing these ATs out. Blasters are long-range damage dealers with little or no armor. Scrappers are close-quarters damage dealers with some armor to compensate for being in melee range. Defenders are healers and protectors with some attacks but not as powerful as Blasters. Controllers are literally crowd controllers, with some damage abilities but really their forte is Holding mobs at bay for others to wipe out. Tankers are armored front-line attackers that are shielded from head to toe, but with limited attacks.

There's not supposed to be one AT that is better than the others, but the Tankers kinda bend if not break that unwritten rule. Tankers can survive fights almost entirely on their own, if properly designed. Only Scrappers can match that, and even Scrappers don't get the higher Hit Point counts Tankers get that allow them to survive longer in battle. Certain Tankers (Fire, cough) have offensive capabilities that can rival a Blaster or Scrapper. A good Tanker can overcome the disadvantages of not having as many attack options as a Blaster or Scrapper. And an expert at playing Tankers can perform a game trick known as 'Herding', the ability to draw or 'aggro' a series of mobs together across an entire map if need be in order to kill enough of the mobs all at once. And to be perfectly honest, when confronting a high-level villain class known as Arch-Villain (AV), you NEED a Tanker there to get the job done because that Tanker is the only one with enough Hit Points and with the needed aggro control to survive the fight.

As a character build, Tankers became popular enough that entire teams were built around the Archetype.  On Champion server, the Tankers even formed an event on the first Tuesday of the month.

One month, Tanker Tuesday fell on Cinco De Mayo.  One of the main organizers, online name of The Ring, decided to throw a Cinco-themed Tanker event:

On the day of Del Dia Tanque itself, there was another large crowd of Tankers waiting at the designated spot in Kings Row. We grouped, we gathered, we danced, we waited for Ring to show up and start this gig. Ring did show, bringing along a special guest, Gen. Zaragoza himself! Sure, he was Level 1 and all, but the General had arrived to start the celebrations off with the proper style. We praised the General and then got the lineups going...

 We ran the Hess Task Force, with the ever-awesome MegaMech!

Ah, one of the best Tanker Tuesdays we ever had.

I miss City of Heroes.  I am not the only one.  The other hero-themed MMOs - DCU Online, Champions Online - just don't play well.  I guess I got spoiled on CoH.  Kinda waiting on a variety of potential replacement hero build MMOs - City of Titans is one, Valiance another - but it's shocking how there's few superhero MMOs in an age of a massive comic-book media wave of television shows and movie blockbusters.

Oh, and as for Cinco de Mayo, don't forget this:

Predicting Character: Who's On First? I Don't Know. THIRD BASE...

(update: Hello Crooks and Liars readers, thank you for following the Mike's Blog Round Up link here!  Thanks again to Batocchio for the linking.  P.S. Here's hoping the UK elections turn up for Labour...)

All I gots is a rehash of an Abbott and Costello routine.

This weekend had three separate announcements for Presidential candidates.  Two on the Republican side and one on the Democrats.

The Republican announcements were unsurprising and uninspiring.

Carly Fiorina announced Monday morning:

Fiorina, 60, pitched herself as an outsider who can bring a business mentality and global contacts to the White House -- and who is not afraid to attack the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Fiorina's minute-long video opens with her watching Clinton's announcement video and snapping it off, saying:  “Our founders never intended us to have a professional political class. They believed that citizens and leaders needed to step forward."

Ben Carson announced either Saturday or Sunday, I'm not sure which:

The announcement is the latest stop on a sudden journey to conservative superstardom. Carson, 63, burst onto the political scene in 2013 when, addressing the typically nonpartisan National Prayer Breakfast, he spoke about the dangers of political correctness, put forward the idea of a flat tax, and criticized President Obama’s health-care law. What made it stand out: He did it right beside a steely faced Obama.

We kinda knew they were coming as they had appeared earlier at an Iowa suck-up gathering, alongside a set of other potential GOP candidates.

The reason I'm not too excited - or terrified - of either candidate is that both of them have major drawbacks.  Let me copy-paste what I wrote about both candidates from that earlier report:

Ben Carson - Surgeon, maybe Maryland (I am not certain which state he will represent) (note: he's making his official announcement from his birthplace of Detroit)
Positives: Among Republicans, he's viewed as a credible anti-Obamacare critic, best-selling Christian spiritual author, anti-gay spokesperson.
Negatives: Has no elected or governing experience to speak of.  While the Constitution doesn't require such experience, any previous elective campaigning would at least provide the needed mindset and endurance to handle a rigorous national campaign.
Chances: His popularity among the Tea Party base is pretty strong...  He's the "Outsider" candidate who can claim he's not corrupt as the "Insider" candidates on the list.  It all depends on if he can find enough financial deep pockets and how he handles himself in debates.
Character Chart: He's the most difficult to pin down as he doesn't have a track record in office to measure his style.  His world-view is akin to a Far Right religious conservative, and his anti-ACA positions show a hatred for government health-care controls.  He presents himself as a Passive-Positive (he may even harbor Passive-Negative habits) but his statements and actions lean Active-Negative.

For Carson, the reasons he's even remotely viewed as a candidate is that he's a fervent Obamacare critic... and because he's Black so he can give a Republican Party that's done a piss-poor job marketing itself to minorities an excuse to pretend they're "diverse".  There's nothing else - no political resume, no track record on any number of other major policy issues - that defines himself as his own man.  As a result he's going to campaign on the base GOP platform... only further Right in order to keep the extremist wingnuts happy.  If he's got any value, he'll draw away votes from the other extremist panderer Ted Cruz...

And now Fiorina:

Carly Fiorina - CEO, California
Positives: One of a handful of women candidates who can broaden the "appeal" of the Republican platform.  Can claim executive experience as a business leader.  She's not as batsh-t crazy as the other prominent woman candidate(s) on the GOP ticket...
Negatives: No elective office or political experience.  She ran a poorly managed Senatorial campaign that ended in a bad loss.  Her track record as CEO - the only real thing she's got - isn't good (was forced out at Hewlett-Packard).
Chances: Slim.  She might run on a platform of "we need a CEO as President", but Romney tried that and didn't win over voters.
Character Chart: There's little on her political resume to confirm a style or world-view, but previous experience with CEO Presidents - Hoover, Bush the Lesser - points to either a person with uncompromising (Hoover) habits or a hands-off administrative style (Bush II).  Considering Fiorina's more aggressive management styles, she leans towards Hoover.  That puts her in the Active-Negative camp.

Like Carson, Fiorina doesn't have any electoral experience.  She's tried but lost, hard.  And like Carson, she doesn't have anything genuine to offer to the electorate other than being a woman candidate in a man-dominated party.  A party that may well run against a strong woman candidate in Hillary.

So to the Republican announcements, I say meh.

What do I say to the Democratic announcement this weekend involving Senator Bernie Sanders?

Avoiding the fanfare that several Republicans have chosen so far when announcing their candidacies, Mr. Sanders issued a statement to supporters that laid out his goals for reducing income inequality, addressing climate change and scaling back the influence of money in politics...
...Mr. Sanders’s bid is considered a long shot, but his unflinching commitment to stances popular with the left — such as opposing foreign military interventions and reining in big banks — could force Mrs. Clinton to address these issues more deeply.

Technically he's not a full party member: Sanders stands as an independent of sorts as a Socialist Democrat... and yes, Sanders openly takes to calling himself that.  He doesn't view 'Socialist' as an insult.

Sanders has been on the national stage a long time, a figure known early on as separate from other more left-leaning politicians - usually Democrats - for pushing a progressive platform fully opposed to the pro-business centrism that the Clintons represent.

Which is part of his appeal as well as a detraction.  Sanders leans far to the Left in a way (too many) Republicans lean too far Right.  In terms of his platform he pursues a blatantly socialist agenda that may sell in Europe (which is habitually socialist as a culture) but honestly doesn't go very far in America... and it's not because America is dominated by an army of Randian Objectivists.  The nation's simply not prepared for some of the agenda, such as a single-payer universal healthcare system: for God's sake, only this month after 4 years of Obamacare has that health-care reform program inched into the "favorable" polling numbers.

Sanders does appeal on specific arguments: he is openly hostile to the income inequality we've been suffering in the U.S. over the last thirty years, a popular issue among Americans; he supports a massive infrastructure program that would generate more jobs; he supports better wages for workers; he is basically the one candidate that would stir the passions of a dispirited progressive Left into paying attention to the Democratic primaries.  Per the New Yorker:

But, for all the challenges Sanders faces, his presence in the Democratic primary field is surely a plus. As I pointed out a few months ago, when he released his Economic Agenda for America, he’s a genuine economic populist, and many of his policy proposals—such as spending a trillion dollars on infrastructure investment, introducing a carbon tax, and replacing private health insurance with Medicare for all—are eminently defensible, if politically unrealistic. Most of all, he will provide a voice to those Democrats who agree with him that the U.S. political system has been bought, lock, stock, and barrel. In the televised debates and elsewhere, he will demand that the other candidates, Clinton included, respond to this indictment and say what they intend to do about it.
That alone is sufficient reason to welcome Sanders to the race. If, in addition, he manages to expand the range of policy options that can be openly discussed and forces Clinton to move from generalities to specifics, he will have performed a real public service.

I would need more research on Sanders' biography to develop the World-View background that Professor Barber would insist making a Character review, but for now I'd have to draw up Sanders' entry like this:

Bernie Sanders - Senator, Vermont
Positives: Has electoral experience for decades serving as a congressman and then Senator.  Has a political agenda that pushes hard Left after decades that most agendas pushed hard Right (the Age of Reagan), meaning a decent chance to shift the goal-posts of the national dialog back to the center.
Negatives: As much as the Far Far Right candidates like Cruz, Rand Paul, and Huckabee (announcing very soon) are poison to the general voting electorate, Sanders is too Far Far Left.  Half of his platform will reek too much of a Socialist agenda too many Americans still despise.  Comes from a small-population state that will not help as a base of voter support.   There is a question that as an independent (not really in the party) that he may not qualify on enough state ballots to count (his campaign is going to have to work overtime to make those ballots).
Chances: Slim.  He's determined, and has a reason to run this thing as far as possible.  But the Democratic Establishment types would be horrified if he gets the nomination: the Wall Street forces will rally like mad for the pro-business candidates like Hillary and could well swamp Sanders' campaign with too much money/power (which ironically will prove Sanders correct about the corruption of campaign money). And he may not appeal across the individual states - especially the more centrist, Red/Purple states in the South and West - he'll need to win primaries.
Character Chart: Sanders' socialist agenda is aggressively behind using the powers of the federal government to the fullest extent of the law, and that government can be used to improve the economy, improve jobs and wages, and uphold broad civil liberties.  On that, Sanders has the look of an Active-Positive (views government as an effective means of change).  However, Sanders displays many of the Active-Negative traits of being Idealistic and Uncompromising: he will not bend on the issues.  The only thing I can be certain of: he will be an Active President if elected.

I just don't see it happening for him.  It would be interesting if he makes it far into the primaries.  But if he becomes the Democratic candidate that will throw the 2016 election into pure chaos, and make the election against the Republican candidate more a campaign over -Isms as philosophical differences and less a campaign over actual effective government.  That could drive moderate voters away from a candidate like Sanders and towards an Establishment-type candidate like Jeb Bush or Scott Walker.

I'd like to think a majority of Americans are ready - after decades of the corrupt anti-tax anti-jobs anti-people self-interest agenda pushed by the Republicans - for a shift back towards the New Deal agenda of the mid-20th Century that sent America forward into a modern, working world.  But I know I don't see eye-to-eye with majority of Americans (dear God, I still can't comprehend how enough Floridians bought the snake-oil that is Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott), so I can't make an honest claim that we are ready.

The Agency of Accountability: The Time Is Now

I didn't write or say much about the killing of Freddie Gray in Baltimore because at the time all I had was the same rage as before about the mindset of brutality among our law enforcement officers towards minorities.  We can repeat the names - Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, what is turning out to be tens if not hundreds more - and we can cry for justice, but time and again justice refused to hold their own accountable for their sins of excessive force and perjured ass-covering.

But at about the same time that I heard word about BridgeGate and how Chris Christie's circle of friends was getting smaller, news out of Baltimore sent shockwaves across the nation:

Six police officers were charged Friday in the death of Freddie Gray as Baltimore’s top prosecutor acted with surprising swiftness in a case that ignited protests and rioting here. She described how Gray allegedly was arrested illegally, treated callously by the officers, and suffered a severe spine injury in the back of a police van while his pleas for medical help were ignored.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby publicly delivered her stunning, detailed narrative of extensive police misconduct in the latest of several cases nationwide that have fueled anger over heavy-handed law enforcement tactics in low-income communities.

Unlike other moments where other cops caught on camera are facing up to the false reports and damaged lives left in their wake, this was huge because the incident itself is so recent.  Most other "official" investigations took months, went through grandiose staged grand juries that didn't peruse evidence as much as convict the victims and free the killers.

This time, Baltimore's state attorney controlling the investigation filed charges as soon as the evidence made it clear just what the cops responsible for Gray's death failed to do (and brings up questions about what they might have done):

• Walking down a street with a companion, Gray makes eye contact with a cop and shows aversion, running from the scene.  Cops give chase, leading up to Gray captured and getting injured on his leg.
• A knife is found on Gray, but it's a standard pocket-knife, not a switchblade.  It's legal.  There are no warrants or cause for arrest, yet the cops still take him in, handcuffing him and later putting him in leg irons.  He is not seated but left on the floor.
• Gray begins asking for an inhaler, having problems with breathing, but otherwise appears physically fine to eyewitnesses at his arrest.
• The police van transporting him takes 30 minutes to drive a two-minute route to the nearest station, although halfway there the van stops for paperwork reasons and because the van driver claims Gray is "irate".  Whatever happened here, the prosecutors' office investigated down to the atoms for some reason, rounding up potential eyewitnesses and finding any street cameras that documented the timeline.
• Van arrives at the station, at which point Gray is unable to talk, breathe, or move.  A medic is called, and Gray is taken to a hospital where he slips into a coma and later dies.
• Autopsy reveals that Gray had 80 percent of his spine severed.

What happened to Gray in that van is known as a "rough ride", a shockingly common practice nobody really talks about because it violates the hell out of every legal right in the book, causes excessive injuries to its victims, and is used by cops to deal with "unruly" prisoners who just happen to look at them wrong.  A rough ride - where an unbuckled prisoner would get thrown hard against something whenever the van swerved the wrong way - could have easily caused that spinal injury that killed Gray.

Just note that one part I mentioned in the previous paragraph: It's common.

It's common, apparently, for our law enforcement to act like bullies to the very people they're supposed to serve and protect.  It's common for excessive force to be used every day by the cops, whether it's pulling over guys on bicycles, or using illegal choke holds, or emptying entire clips into one unarmed black man.  It's common to use force, and then the threat of force: because once people know you're capable of it and never get called on it, they have every reason to fear your use of force, don't they...?

It's common because it was... it IS... the policy of the powerful.  To quote Ta-Nehisi Coates:

But I have a problem when you begin the clock with the violence on Tuesday. Because the fact of the matter is that the lives of black people in this city, the lives of black people in this country have been violent for a long time. Violence is how enslavement actually happened. People will think of enslavement as like a summer camp, where you just have to work, where you just go and someone gives you food and lodging, but enslavement is violence, it is torture. Torture is how it was made possible. You can’t imagine enslavement without stripping away people’s kids and putting them up for sale. And the way you did that was, you threatened people with violence. Jim Crow was enforced through violence. That was the way things that got done. You didn’t politely ask somebody not to show up and vote. You stood in front of voting booths with guns, that’s what you did. And the state backed this; it was state-backed violence.

And so the cops rarely answer for the violence they commit.  Because the state profits from it.

The other troubling thing is the crime cops commit on a regular basis for which they never answer: the constant lying about their own actions.  Oh, we know excessive force when it's used, and the cops know too, and so to make themselves look better they perjure themselves.  They lie about the reasons why they went for the gun instead of the pepper spray, they lie about why they used the pepper spray, they lie about the severity of the injuries they've caused, they lie about evidence because that planted gun and bag of drugs has to count for something to earn that conviction rate...

It happens so often the cops call it "testilying".

As far back as the Rodney King assault/arrest, I could barely accept the fact that the jury acquitted the cops of violently beating King to within an inch of his life.  What enraged me further was how the charge that they lied on their arrest reports - they reported "minor injuries" when King suffered concussion and broken bones - didn't stick.  The jury let them slide on the one thing that wasn't in argument: the fact that they lied about what they did to King.  The medical evidence clearly contradicted everything the cops claimed, and the jury still acquitted.

And we complain about the communities rising up in riots after every questionable death.  Because we as a society, we Americans living outside of that poverty zone, outside of those red-lined ghettos, can turn a blind eye because we buy those lies, we take the cops' word when time and again cops have been caught lying.  Because we refuse to hold accountable those who have the law as their excuse.

But it is long overdue for cops to be held accountable (Quis custodiet...).

...But at the same time, (Mosby) added, “those officers that usurped their authority, you have to be able to hold them accountable because it does a disservice to the really hardworking police officers. So for me it’s about applying justice fairly and accurately to those with or without a badge...”

We need to do more than talk about needed reforms in our law enforcement practices.  We need action to reduce the use of excessive force down to nil.  We need a judicial system in place that can better police its own to ensure lying cops do not profit from their lies.

We need to recognize that the injustice of excessive force can no longer be tolerated.

We need to recognize that lies kill.  Lies can kill justice as much as those lies can kill our loved ones.

What Would Happen If Florida Had a Meltdown And No One Cared

That's pretty much what happened last week.

Our Florida government pretty much collapsed, with the Senate and House branches at each others' collective throats and Governor Rick "No Ethics" Scott cheering the radicals in the House towards blowing everything up... as metaphor first.  By the end of June, those radicals will be blowing everything up for reals...

And the overall response of the Florida citizenry?

We were probably too busy worrying about Jameis Winston getting drafted first overall to the Tampa Bay Bucs (I wasn't.  I was pining for Marcus Mariota).

The apathy was so palpable the Tampa Bay Times wrote about it:

But last week's legislative meltdown in Tallahassee, dramatic and dysfunctional as it was, doesn't appear to threaten the political future of Republicans who control both chambers of state government — or of anyone else in their party running for office in 2016.

Most GOP state lawmakers remain in safe, conservative-leaning districts. Democrats have only a thin bench to challenge the ones who don't. And there's little indication that many Floridians are aware that their state Legislature, an institution followed far less closely than Congress, is gridlocked.

"I always use my parents, who live in Orlando, as a measure — and it's fair to say the average Floridian isn't paying a lot of attention compared to the rest of us living in the bubble of Tallahassee," said David Hart, executive president of the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

Even the legal recourse open to us - the courts - seems unable to force the self-serving House leadership to answer to their oaths of office:

Senate Democrats sued the House, asking the court Thursday to bring representatives back to finish their work. On Friday, the Florida Supreme Court ruled the House had violated the state Constitution — but, with the midnight deadline of the regular session approaching, it was too late to call anyone back to Tallahassee.

The House HAS violated the state Constitution... but the courts said "eh, time's up" and moved on.

No accountability applied to the bastards.  No voters will turn on them because they've gerrymandered themselves into safe seats.  (where the hell are the court trials trying to break these gerrymanders under the Fair Districts amendments?)  There's only so much the media can highlight, there's only so much the courts can do to intervene.  Whatever checks and balances are in place to impose service to the law, that's all broken in this rigged game.

Serious question: What penalties can be applied here? What's the felony count on on state legislator who violates the state Constitution?  What do the Statutes say on this?

So far I'm finding nothing linking legislators to any oath of office other than an oath while filing for elections.  I need to do a little more research.

I've skipped over to the Criminal statutes - Title 46 or XLVI - to see if I can browse for anything covering misconduct of elected officials.  The only thing I'm finding relates to Bribery.  I am not seeing anything related to misconduct.  Not yet.  Other than Conspiracy or Fraudulent Practices, the Legislature apparently planned ahead and made certain there would be no repercussions for being a-holes in office.

If there are any legal experts on Florida law, please leave a comment.  If there's a law that can punish the legislators themselves for their insubordination, their refusal to do the job they were elected (and paid, damn them) to do, we need to charge them right here right now.

'Cause the next meltdown will be a doozy: failure next time means 800,000 state residents lose their health care.  And while that may wake the state, while that may make Floridians sit up and take notice that their corrupt Republican overlords are sadistic self-serving sociopaths, by then it will be too late.

In Brief: Bwhahahaha on BridgeGate

There were two criminal investigations of note reporting in today, and I want to just cover in brief the first one.  Following more than a year of digging into who was responsible for shutting down traffic at a key interstate bridge - with serious interference with business, law enforcement, and public safety, AKA BridgeGate - one of the people involved with that shutdown pled guilty:

A former ally of Gov. Chris Christie pleaded guilty Friday to helping to engineer traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge in 2013 and concocting a cover-up along with two other officials with close ties to Christie.

David Wildstein did not implicate Christie in the scheme that has cast a long shadow over the Republican governor’s White House prospects in 2016.

Wildstein, an official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey at the time of the tie-ups, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy...

...Before Wildstein appeared in court, Christie declined to comment Friday as he left a hotel in McLean, Virginia. Christie has insisted all along that he knew nothing about the scheme...

Considering how all three - Wildstein and the other officials - were all close to Christie and had worked with him for years, Christie's alibi of not knowing about the scheme comes across like a child's poor excuse when caught leaving toys all over the playroom.

Here's the questions about BridgeGate: Who profited from the bridge shut-down?  From whose office did most of the plans originate?  Who behaves regularly with a my-way-or-else mindset - the same mindset behind the bridge shutdown - when dealing with enemy and ally alike?  The answers keep pointing back to Chris Christie.

The entire BridgeGate scandal has the markings of the act of a bully, a behavioral trait easily applied to Christie and one he cannot avoid now.  While that bullying behavior may appeal to Christie's voting base, it's not a winning one (remember the thing Machiavelli warns against: inspiring hate is the one thing a Prince must never do).  Bullying leads to hate of the bully, and more and more people have gotten to hate Christie...

And now all it's going to take is one of the other two who haven't pled yet - Bridget Kelly who was Christie’s deputy chief of staff, and Bill Baroni who was appointed by Christie to serve at the Port Authority (in charge of the bridge) - to give up any detail at all showing Christie knew.  And Christie won't be able to bluff or bully his way out of anything again.

Update Florida: Two Things To Anger The Blood

First up, an update on Rick "No Medicaid For Florida" Scott's idea of suing the Obama administration into keeping afloat a Medicaid funding program that does not exist anymore: he went through with it, the crooked bastard:

Yesterday, the governor took this one step further, going to court to force Washington to give Florida federal funds for a program that will no longer exist. Scott wants health care money from the Obama administration to help Floridians (through LIP), but at the same time, he also doesn’t want health care money from the Obama administration to help Floridians (through the ACA).

LIP doesn't exist anymore, and doesn't need to because the ACA program provides Medicaid funding at a reduced cost to taxpayers and for better coverage.  But Scott would rather fight to the death to get LIP extended another year, all because he's horrified to take anything Obamacare-related.  He's spent his entire political career (even before he was elected Governor in 2010 he fought health care reform plans) against it: accepting any reform funding would kill his self-image and standing among the wingnut voters who flock to him.

The solution to this is simple: Rick "No Ethics" Scott needs to man up and recognize the state of Florida needs that Medicaid money, not only to balance the state's internal budgets but because IT'S THE RIGHT F-CKING THING TO DO FOR 800,000 RESIDENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES.  /headdesk

And speaking of state budgeting, back to the Florida Legislature's mini-Civil War unfurling as the Senate leadership tries to trout-slap the taste out of the House's collective mouth.  Per the Tampa Bay Times again:

...The Florida Legislature's chaotic session hit a new dysfunctional low Wednesday as an irate Senate demanded that House leaders bring lawmakers back to work or risk violating the state Constitution...

...Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, said the House "trick" of shutting down Tuesday could violate a provision in the Constitution that says: "Neither house shall adjourn for more than 72 consecutive hours except pursuant to a concurrent resolution" signed by the two chambers. The session is scheduled to end by midnight Friday.

"You adjourned the Florida House of Representatives in contravention of express provisions of the Florida Constitution," Gardiner wrote in a letter to Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island. "I respectfully request that you reconvene your chamber to finish the important work of the people of Florida."

After the letter was read and senators gave Gardiner a standing ovation, he told them: "This new trick that they did is not part of the negotiating tools. It's wrong, not just for the Senate, but it's wrong for the state of Florida, to essentially say that one chamber is not relevant..."

"...I understand that you are angry that the House concluded our business," Crisafulli wrote (back). "I told you that the House could not pass Obamacare expansion. It's not something that I can force them to pass … This is a matter of the House exercising its constitutional duty to represent those who elected us..."

The problem with your position, Crisafulli, is that there was more on the table to deal with than just the Obamacare funding.  You refused to deal with other budgeting matters.  You left the Senate hanging without resolution to matters covering water policy, state prison reforms, utilities oversight, and even funding for the Far Right's pet project of charter schools.  The House abandoned any effort to work out a budget, and basically flipped off the Senate on the way out the door (the Times article makes it clear most of the House Republicans are pissing on their Senate colleagues over this).  You basically quit out from doing your jobs, and kudos to the State Senate if they decide to charge you ass-clowns in the House of violating your constitutional duties/oaths of office.

...Wait, did I just praise Republicans in the state Senate?!  (rushes off to the bathtub to scourge self)